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Nicholas Meyer
| Place of birth = New York City, New York, USA | Date of death = | Place of death = | Awards for Trek = 1 Saturn Award, 2 nominations 3 Hugo Award nominations | Roles = Writer, Director }} Nicholas Meyer directed and . He wrote the screenplays for and Star Trek VI. Though never credited for his efforts, Meyer rewrote much of the screenplay for The Wrath of Khan by combining several elements from earlier drafts. He is also largely responsible for the nautical influence that pervades The Wrath of Khan and its sequels, from the military essence of the red-jacket uniforms to the more heated and dramatic character of the battle sequences. Meyer's more militaristic take on the Star Trek universe was vehemently opposed by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry as it did not correspond with his vision of the enlightened Star Trek universe, but the latter was toothless at the time of Wrath of Khan, due to the stipulations in the contract he had with Paramount Pictures. The situation however came to a head with The Undiscovered Country when Roddenberry (now back again "on staff" as he was the Executive Producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation) blew his top over the racism in regard to the Klingons exhibited in that movie, and a very vicious (as Meyer was by no means a man to be outdone by Roddenberry) meeting between the two parties followed. "His guys ''[Roddenberry's legal staff, headed by the in ''Star Trek-lore reviled Leonard Maizlish]'' were lined up on one side of the room, and my guys were lined up on the other side of the room, and this was not a meeting in which I felt I'd behaved very well, very diplomatically. I came out of it feeling not very good, and I've not felt good about it ever since. He was not well would indeed pass away only a short time later, and maybe there were more tactful ways of dealing with it, because at the end of the day, I was going to go out and make the movie. I didn’t have to take him on. Not my finest hour.", a rueful Meyer later recounted. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/star-trek-nicholas-meyers-explains-his-roddenberry-regret/ In , Meyer was interviewed for the special feature "''Star Trek: The Three Picture Saga" on the DVD box release of Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection (alongside Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, Peter Krikes, Steve Meerson, Harve Bennett, and Ralph Winter), and published his autobiography The View from the Bridge - Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood. Career outside Star Trek A graduate from the University of Iowa with a degree in theater and filmmaking, Nicholas Meyer, prior to his involvement with the Trek films, was best known for adapting and directing the 1979 time-travel film, Time After Time (starring Malcolm McDowell and David Warner), and for writing the Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror (in 1993, he wrote a third, The Canary Trainer). He also wrote the adapted screenplay for the film version of Solution (for which he earned a 1977 Academy Award nomination), whose cast included Georgia Brown, Joel Grey, Samantha Eggar and Jeremy Kemp. The Day After Though Nicholas Meyer is well known to Star Trek audiences, his most influential work, as far as the general public was concerned, was directing the ABC Cold War television movie (1983, and on which Michael Westmore served as make-up artist, earning him one of his many Emmy Award nominations), which stunned contemporary audiences for its then graphic display of a nuclear holocaust and its aftermath. According to the third episode, "Shop 'til You Drop", broadcast on 15 April 2013, of the National Geographic series, , nearly 100 million Americans tuned in for its first broadcast on 20 November 1983. The documentary further postulated that the movie was a co-influence on then President Ronald Reagan to embark upon the "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI, or popularly known as "Star Wars"). Meyer, who was featured in the documentary, mentioned that the producers had trouble finding a director due to the controversial nature of the production, and that he ended up being hired as the third or fourth choice of the producers. It nevertheless won Meyer two 1984 Emmy Award nominations in two categories and a German Golden Screen Award in 1985. Meyer embarked upon this project directly after The Wrath of Khan. Star Trek awards Meyer has earned the following award win and nominations for his work in Star Trek. Hugo Awards In the category Best Dramatic Presentation * Hugo Award nomination for , shared with Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett, and Samuel A. Peeples * Hugo Award nomination for , shared with Leonard Nimoy, Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, and Harve Bennet * Hugo Award nomination for , shared with Leonard Nimoy, Denny Martin Flinn, Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal Saturn Awards * Saturn Award win for The Wrath of Khan in the category Best Director, sole nominee * Saturn Award nomination for The Voyage Home in the category Best Writing, shared with Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, and Harve Bennet * Saturn Award nomination for The Undiscovered Country in the category Best Writing, shared with Denny Martin Flinn Further reading * "Nicholas Meyer, Witness at the End of the World", Robert Greenberger, Starlog, January 1984, pp. 16-18 * "Nicholas Meyer, The Man Who Saved Star Trek", Dennis Fischer, Cinefantastique, Vol 17 #3/4, 1987, pp. 35-39 * "Nicholas Meyer Franchise Mr. Fix-It", Sheldon Teitelbaum, Cinefantastique, Vol 22 #3, 1991, pp. 24-26 External links * NMeyer.plx.net - official site * * * Interview at TrekMovie.com Category:Writers Category:Directors Category:Saturn Award winners Category:Saturn Award nominees Category:Hugo Award nominees de:Nicholas Meyer es:Nicholas Meyer fr:Nicholas Meyer it:Nicholas Meyer nl:Nicholas Meyer pl:Nicholas Meyer